Social and environmental perspectives in the design of engineering and service systems

Abstract:
The globalization of most industrial operations has led to a high degree of disconnect between the consumers and the goods and services they consume. The connections between the manufactured products and the culture and place from which they originate and their place of consumption are often lost. This leads to accelerating environmental degradation and decreased quality of life for many people. The engineering community is partly responsible for this situation, due to their lack of consideration of the ecological and social consequences of design in a comprehensive manner by taking into account the rich contexts in which goods and services are produced and consumed. Adaptation and incorporation of ideas from ecological design and the development of appropriate curricula have the potential to change this situation significantly. In this paper, I describe an approach to accomplish these objectives.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 71 other followers

Acknowledgements

This web site is hosted by Harvey Mudd College's Center for Design Education; its development was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant EEC-1102663, which also supported Mudd Design Workshop VIII.